Obama’s Promise Zones plan explained

President Barack Obama is set to announce Wednesday that he has selected five communities across the country to be the first new “Promise Zones.”

What does this mean?

Essentially, the White House is placing the five struggling communities into the intensive care unit so that it can apply some targeted economic medicine to try to revive them. Fifteen more communities are expected to selected over the next three years.

This medicine will be in the form of increased federal funding, tax incentives and grants. The funds aim to bolster education, access to housing and reduce crime and to partner with local community leaders and businesses.

The theory is that if you want to address problems in a truly disadvantaged neighborhood “you can’t do one thing at a time,” said Harry Holzer, a public policy professor at Georgetown University.

“In a country as great as this one, a child’s zip code should never be what determines his or her opportunity,” said Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House domestic policy council, in a blog post discussing the promise-zone initiative.

The first regions are in in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Each of the regions are tied with a major employer. For instance, the eastside neighborhood of San Antonio includes a partnership with St. Philip’s College. In west Philadelphia, the program includes Drexel University.

Conservatives reacted with skepticism.

Victor Keith of the American Thinker, pointed out that the three cities selected are run by Democratic mayors and ehe state of Kentucky is run by a Democratic governor.

But others detected some common ground in the new proposals.

Long demagogued by Dems, Obama now sees low taxes, less red tape as path to prosperity for very poor. Gee really? http://t.co/I2NnUTshmh